Movie review: 'Woman at War' is an off-beat eco-thriller

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Friday

Mar 15, 2019 at 12:01 AMMar 15, 2019 at 10:06 AM

Quirky doesn’t begin to describe “Woman at War” and its climate change crusading protagonist who divides her time between directing a choir and plotting terrorist attacks on corporations she blames for destroying the environment. Think Unabomber, but much more genial and infinitely more maternal given her eagerness to adopt an orphaned preschooler from Ukraine. She also doesn’t kill or maim, unless you consider blacking out smelting plants injurious.

Like a twisted Icelandic Robin Hood, she uses her trusty bow and arrow to short circuit giant transmission lines as part of a concerted effort to keep Iceland green by cutting off electricity to the polluters. Understandably, she has her detractors, who’ve enlisted spy satellites and the CIA to reveal her identity. She also has a couple of co-conspirators in a gruff, but endearing, sheep farmer and a low-level government wonk helping to keep those authorities at bay.

It’s all very twee in a Wes Anderson sort of way, as director Benedikt Erlingsson loads up on eccentricities, most notably a three-piece band and a trio of female singers (dressed in traditional garb) serving as a decidedly offbeat, on-screen Greek chorus. But what he and co-writer Olafur Egilsson are getting at couldn’t be direr. And that is the simple fact we’re not doing enough to protect the planet. They think the world could use more women like their environmental vigilante, Halla (Halldora Geirharosdottir). Yes, she’s breaking the law, but hasn’t our failure to heed the warnings demanded a more militant approach to precipitating change? What’s great is the pair don’t smack you over the head with their plea; instead serving it with a healthy dose of humor. Not laugh-out-loud funny, mind you; more a knowing chuckle and an occasional tear when a storm front of pathos blows across the temperate grasslands.

Not afraid to name names, their chief villain is the giant multinational Rio Tinto, whose aluminum smelting plants consume 70 percent of Iceland’s power supply. It’s those factories Halla has in her sights in creating havoc with their production schedules by shutting down the grid. The writers’ other target is the apathy of Halla’s fellow Icelanders, represented well by her twin sister, Asa (also Geirharosdottir), a yoga instructor more into looking inside herself than outside at a stressed-out Earth. Can she/we count on her to come around when things get perilous for Halla?

The movie doesn’t do nearly enough with their relationship; ditto for Halla’s insatiable urge to become a single mother at the age of 49. But we get a sense that Halla is much lonelier than she seems living alone in a modest home she adorns with large portraits of Gandhi and Mandela, fellow martyrs who knew a thing or two about advocating social change. They’d no doubt approve of her civil disobedience, a feeling not shared by a police force she continues to fluster with her uncanny ability to avoid apprehension.

It’s tricky – particularly given the current political climate – to glorify an eco-terrorist like Halla, but Geirharosdottir enables Erlingsson to pull it off with an uncanny ability to remain likable in the face of escalating crimes. You’re heart breaks for her Halla, especially when she’s gazing longingly at a photo of her adorable daughter-to-be, Nika, using it as a quick means to a deeper, more loving connection whenever the fight gets too daunting.

It adds to a catharsis achieved through our own suspicions of self-serving malfeasance by politically backed global industries (and a complicit press) nefariously seeking to enrich their riches. You cheer for Halla and jeer the corrupt-and-clueless muckety-mucks knowingly contributing to weather patterns that have triggered massive flooding, raging forest fires and killer tornadoes worldwide. It culminates in a just ending; one not of acquiescence, but small victories achieved in Halla’s gutsy quest to fight the power by cutting the power.